Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #63: "Obia"

Exploring the mythology of other cultures is both challenging and rewarding. We are familiar with the culture that makes up our own society and know the fairy tales, myths, and urban legends connected with it. For me that is European culture. So the stories of the Brothers Grimm, the tales and myths from Europe and America constitute the main sources for many of my stories.  Most of us know some tale from the Middle East:  stories about Aladdin, Sindbad, djinns and magic lamps. But other cultures are farther off. I've written a few tales about Japanese and Chinese culture, but they required research because I'm not as familiar with the lore of Asia. The same is true of Africa. My story "Obia" was an attempt to draw on African myth.

An obia is a creature—a monster of sorts, but not exactly. It seems to be some kind of wild beast and yet seems sentient. It is a creature responsive to the commands of witches and shamans. And yet is not exactly an evil sort of creature. Some of the categories we like to put monsters in do not quite apply to the obia--who maybe had a good side? This intrigued me. Could I work with a monster that wasn't exactly a monster?

This is an old tradition in Western/European literature. If you've read the original novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, you'll feel quite a bit of sympathy for the monster Frankenstein creates. In fact, one critic noted, it is Frankenstein, in his drive/desire to master and dominate nature—a drive that leads him to create clandestine life—who is the real monster of the story. And we feel compassion and sympathy for King Kong, for werewolves, sometimes for vampires who are caught up in their vampire life and can't escape it, for ghosts who want to go to their rests. The clean lines between good and evil, monster and human, often become blurred in a well-written monster story. The obia is just such a creature.

Moremia

This obia is responsive to a sorceress named Hajara. When she does not summon him for many days, he goes to her house and finds it burned down and finds her body hanging from a tree. He gnaws the rope to get her body down and sees that Moremi, a younger witch, is there. She is not permitted by religious law to touch a rotted corpse. The obia buries Hajara and listens as Moremi tells him what happened to his former human contact. White slave traders came to the area. The people of a local village feared Hajara and made a deal:  if the whites would kill her, they would give them some of their people as slaves. The slavers succeeded in killing Hajara and load their ship with slaves the village gave them in exchange for their services. Moremi knows they will come after her soon. She feeds the obia and, as he sleeps, sends him a vision. After the vision, he knows what to do.

He travels to the seacoast and finds the slavers' camp. He sees their boat and the camp where they have lodged captives in preparation for the passage to America. The creature leaps on the side of the ship, digging his claws into the planks of the ship, and capsizes it (obia are large—the size of a small elephant). The slavers attack him, but in the disorder, their captives manage to get free and seize the camp, overcoming their captors. In the battle that follows, the obia takes a bullet in the lung.

He struggles through the jungle, his life ebbing away. As he nears Moremi's house he sees a group of armed villagers coming toward him. Too weak to attack them, he collapses but wakes up safe in Moremi's place. She has healed him and told him the villagers he thought had come to kill him were sent by her; they saw the error of their ways, asked her pardon, and sent a search party to find him and bring him back to her.

As the obia lies and heals, he anticipates what Moremi has promised him:  one of the slave traders and an African who had collaborated with him to deliver captives. His mouth waters thinking of the meal he will have when full healing comes.

This story appeared in a journal called Diagonal Proof, no longer in print and with no archive. It may be yet another story to resubmit.

A full moon appeared on the night of the Summer Solstice. A good time to read a vampire novel. My novel, Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute explores the nefarious world of the undead--and what they do to survive through the centuries.

For additional titles, check out my Writer's Website.

I would love to hear your comments.